Toot Toot!!! In the pub!

Edited: Eeek, sorry, I've removed the mag articles, but you can see them in the November issue of the mag ;o)

Yay!! I've been into town this morning and picked up the November Craft Stamper magazing and drrrrrrrrrrrrum roll....I'm in it!!! Whoopidoo!!! I got to play with the free stamp to make some samples for this issue and I have to say, I really LOVE those stamps!!

And, as luck would have it, Sam's hubby Phil was having his birthday around this time too and I was having so much fun with the stamp that I used it on his birthday card too:

Oh yes, and it's Altered Flowers over at Tag, You're It! this weekend, and a chance for you to meet the lovely ladies who've joined the team to offer up more inspiration with the challenges! They are the hugely talented Carol, Sarah, Kath and Dawn - go check out their blogs, you'll be glad you did! The challenge this week is to create a tag using altered flowers - these can be altered in any way you like - stamped, embossed, cut, glazed..... entirely up to you. Well...... I DID stamp on my flowers - honest I did! I used a music sheet background stamp. Humph! It didn't quite have the effect I was aiming for, just a grubby flower look!! LOL!! The chandelier stamp is actually one of my own - heavily inspired by the 'famous' chandelier stamp, I made this one from my own pic!

I do like a bit of bling - can you tell? LOL!!! Thanks for stopping by, and if you've been kind enough to leave me feedback, Thank You so much - it's greatly appreciated! ;o) xx

Dream Tag

Well it may be late coming but the glorious weather we've been enjoying here for the last few days is MOST welcome! It's given me the chance to get out into my garden and have a good ol' autumnal tidy-up in preparation for the big fall. We are surrounded by trees on all sides here which is gorgeous in Winter, Spring and Summer, but we don't half work hard for them it in the Autumn! LOL!! I've discovered something really freakish too - we have a very small pond in the garden which I put in a couple of years ago hoping to attract frogs - Oh boy, did we attract frogs!!! This year, back in March/April time I discovered our first ever batch of frog spawn which I got really excited about and I bought a small fish tank and detached a few of the eggs so that my children could watch them develop! That was really exciting for them. However, what I have been noticing is that some of the tadpoles in my pond have never evolved - it is now mid-late September and mano of them are STILL tadpoles!!! I also seem to have an albino frog! He's only tiny, fully formed but completely white! However, he won't be still for long enough for me to get a photo of him! (or her, of course, before I'm accused of being sexist! LOL!!).

So before I get lost in the wonders of my garden, here's my tag for this week. It's a Stampsmith photo stamp and I think she's called Sabrina or something like that - I never do labels because I can never remember who makes what and titles, but I do know that all the other stamps I used are Fancy Pants. Whatever her name is, she didn't want to be photographed!!! You wouldn't believe the trouble I had getting a decentish photo of my tag!!! The image kept coming out distorted, like old newspaper - brilliant if that's the look I wanted to achieve, but I didn't, FGS it took me a dozen stamps to get a clear image of her in the first place!!! LOL!

Well whatever jollies you have lined up for yourselves this weekend, I hope the weather holds out for you wherever you are, and I thank you for popping by my blog - it's much appreciated! ;o) xx

And just for a change.... a tag....!!!!

Over at Tag, You're It! this week we invited Sarah to be our Guest Inspirational Designer this week because she produces the most incredibly inspiring creations and her fantastic Christmas Tags have got me well and truly revved up for the season. Guess what I'll be doing this weekend!!!! LOL!

Well here is my tag this week - the theme is Needle and Thread and after spending Tuesday night handstitching 20+ labels into uniforms, there was NO WAY I was going to start again on my tag so I got my trusty Toshiba out for that one - oh boy, my senses are re-awakened, I LURVE my sewing machine again!!

Thanks for popping by!

Friday again

Well I don't know about anyone else but I think this years' 6-week holiday has gone much quicker than any other I've ever known! Why is that? It could be that my children are that bit older and that bit more independent so less reliant on me to provide round-the-clock entertainment for them which has allowed me a bit more time for myself? Maybe others have their own theories which I'd love to hear!

I've had a very creative week or two but a lot of what I've been doing is either over on my Magnolia blog or cannot be blogged yet because they're for publication. I do however have this tag to show that I made earlier in the week - it was inspired by something I saw on Silvia's blog who's work I absolutely adore and would love to have her style - if you've not seen her blog yet, how come?

You may have spotted that my stitching went a bit awry - that's because it was a last-minute decision to do the stitching and I obviously had too many layers to stitch through and my machine rebelled, LOL!! At first I cursed, then I decided that actually I quite like it, it fits in with the 'shabby' side of the shabby chic look I was trying to achieve. So undeterred I carried on with it and this was the result - there was great temptation to thread a needle and stitch it by hand, but then I decided life was too short for perfection!!! LOL!! The text, which is impossible to read here, says "Nobody knows what a boy is worth. And the world must wait and see; for every man in a (I know, should be 'an' - tut!!) honoured place, Is a boy that used to be" - sniff!! How true, and this is my own adorable young man who's honoured place for now is on my tag! LOL!

Thanks for stopping by! ;0) xx

Tag - Punch Art

Happy Friday folks - I tell you, the time is whizzing by way too quickly. I'm now officially in therapy in readiness for returning to work on 1st Sept. BOOOO!!!!!! :o( However, I shan't let it spoil my day - I'm all loved up today because me and my gorgeous bloke are celebrating our 10th Wedding Anniversary today....sigh!!! It was a fabulous wedding - we booked ourselves a holiday cottage in the West Highlands of Scotland for a week then hit upon the brilliant idea of stopping off en route at Gretna to 'tie the knot' at the Blacksmith's Cottage! Despite wanting to keep it just the two of us, my sisters and best friend put their feet down and were adamant they wanted to share our day so they all drove up from Manchester and Birmingham to spend the afternoon with us in the glorious sunshine and witness our marriage. Then we all ran around Gretna Village trying to find the place where I'd booked us lunch only to discover when we found it that they'd decided to give it to another wedding party who'd turned up 'on the offchance'!! LOL!!! You'd think it would put the dampers on it wouldn't you, but we just laughed it off and the Manager arranged a very quick buffet for us in under 3/4 of an hour and a piper played for us while we waited! It was the most perfect day!

I suppose all this was on my mind when I was making my tag for this week's Tag, You're It! theme which is hosted this week by the wonderfully gorgeous and grossly over-talented Deb Neerman who has chosen Punch Art as her topic. So pop over there and see what other delights there are in store, and if you have 10 minutes and a load of scraps of left-over paper to spare, why not bung them all together on a tag and join in the fun! Thanks for popping in and have a great day!

Sisters are doing it for themselves...!

Ooer! I've joined the Sisterhood of Blogging Stampers, and so far it's been quite painless ~ no flashing of the knees or nipples and definitely no dodgy handshakes! And apparently I'm in Group 23 (which is my birth date so that's quite apt!!) with (so far) 12 other lovely ladies - some I already know and the others I shall acquaint myself with soon! Now, as I type this, I believe there are 13 of us in this group which means there are places for 7 more new 'Sisters'. It would be fab if some of my lovely blogging buddies nab some these places because it would be great to share more space with you! I think at this point I'm supposed to share details about me - Eeek! What's there to say ~ I'm just me, Anne - I stamp, I cut and stick bits of paper together, bend bits of card and I think it's fair to say that I'm happiest when I have a paintbrush in my hand and some fab music blaring away behind me. I have been a member of the Magnolia Design Team for over 12 months and I am loving their stamps as much today as when I first discovered them about 18 months ago. I also like to make my own stamps which I show off on here from time to time. Well, that's the crafty me - the 'real' me is mum to two adorable little fella's, Missus to an adorable big fella, and chief to two fabtastic doggies!! So that pretty much sums me up ~ no doubt my 'sisters' will learn more about me in the fullness of time, as I hope to about them too! :o)

My Stamps

Am editing this because at the time I stuck it on here I was panicking because I was having so many problems with blogger and couldn't type much. However, it all seems perfectly in order again now and I want to link my tag to Theme Thursday's challenge blog which this week is all about Tags!

Ooer! I seem to be having blogger problems today - I keep getting gremlin messages and it's freakin' me out!! So I'm leaving this very short and sweet in case it all goes belly-up. This is a tag I made using one of my own stamps, I called it Nu Shooz because it's a pic of my youngest son's new shoes! Thanks for looking in - hope I'll be back :o{